Thursday, April 30, 2015

Canadian Association of Law Libraries 2015 Conference Annual Reports

Annual reports of committees and special interest groups have been submitted in anticipation of the general meeting.

Here are summaries of some of them: Professional Development Committee (PDC):Ideas coming out of the work of a Law Librarians Competencies Working Group will be presented at the conference.A common list of competencies for all law librarians is at the heart of the work. The Committee will try to ensure that these core competencies are being represented in CALL’s programming from now on.

The PDC has a very active Webinar Subcommittee that ran 7 events in the 2014 year, generating a net revenue of $3,476.37. In 2014, the Committee launched a very popular webinar series on substantive law topics given by Ted Tjaden, national litigation precedents lawyer in Gowlings’ Toronto office. So far in 2015, the Committee has held 3 sessions with an estimated revenue so far is $3,877.00 (an estimated net revenue of $2,221.05).

Committee to Promote Research:
No research grant was awarded for the spring of 2015 since no applications were received.

The committee has discussed new requirements for the research grant process,
including a 2-year deadline, a written or published report or presentation, a progress report at the end of the first year,
grant monies to be returned if conditions are not met, and agreement to be signed by the recipient. There will be only
one deadline in March, and the October deadline will be discontinued if there is no award in the spring.

The Committee has organized a 2015 conference session that will focus on
writing and publishing book chapters and other contributions, potentially leading up to a session in 2016 on publishing
a book.

Membership Development Committee (MDC):
The MDC has made major efforts to make the membership renewal process easier and more effective and has done a lot of outreach, in particular by sending personal emails and phone calls to our lapsed members and by a very active program to interest students in CALL and law librarianship as a career.

In the 2014–2015 academic year, the MDC continued the Education Institutions Visits program. The goal of
the program is the outreach to students of MIS/ MLIS programs to inform them about law librarianship
as a possible career path and the value of CALL/ ACBD as a professional association. Seven Library and
Information Science schools and one college, Nova Scotia Community College Library & Information
Technology Program offering a program for library technicians, were visited at least once.

The Member Interviews project continued in 2014-2015, with a total
of 6 interviews posted so far on the website (example).
MDC’s plan is for this project to continue on through
the 2015-2016 cycle.

Scholarships and Awards Committee:
The James D. Lang Memorial Scholarship for the fall of 2014 was awarded to Katie Thomas of
PricewaterhouseCoopers in Toronto to support her attendance at
WebSearch University 2014 in Arlington, VA.

The Northern Exposure to Leadership Institute was held in Emerald Lake, British Columbia, from March 29 to April 4, 2015. Carolyn Petrie was chosen by the committee to be CALL/ACBD’s nominee to the Institute. She was chosen to attend.

Money from the Education Reserve Fund helped another member attend the Executive and Professional Development Program: Certificate in Team Building and Group Dynamics at St.
Mary’s University.

The winners of more awards will be announced at the conference in Moncton, including the Denis Marshall Memorial Award for Excellence in Law Librarianship and the Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

Canadian Law Library Review:
The Review, the official journal of the association, has successfully moved to an electronic-only format using the ISSU
U
Digital publishing platform. There are enormous advantages to moving to an electronic-only
format
.
Most notably in terms of cost saving. The CLLR is now in a position where it will pay for
itself and perhaps even make a small profit this year.

The committee in charge of the Review is now asking itself whether the time has come to make the CLLR freely and openly available to act as both
a resource for librarians and legal researchers and a publicity vehicle for the association.

Canadian Abridgment Editorial Advisory Board:
The Canadian Abridgment is a topical compilation of Canadian case digests produced by Carswell (Westlaw Canada). The Board, composed of 7 CALL members, meets at least once a year with the editorial staff of the Canadian Abridgment.

The 2014-2016 publishing program:

The Labour & Employment Reissue will be coming out in December (30 vols)

19 new sub-classifications have been added based on a review of Abridgment and
Canada Law Book classification schemes

Civil Practice and Procedure Reissue will be coming out in December (28 vols)

Canadian and International volume for the Canadian Statue Citations’ supplements are
getting too big so will need to be rebound

There was a discussion of the long-term plan for the print Abridgment. With stable demand, the
view is that it will continue.

In terms of the Index to Canadian legal Literature, the Board discussed indexing videos and blogs from stable sources, as well as the desirability of enhancing
ICLL functionality (for example, for the ICLL to work with link resolvers).
Podcasts have begun to be added. More CLE materials are being added.
Strategies for updating the functionality of the ICLL was further discussed (link resolver capability, and suggestions for linking headings, authors, integration into other areas of
WestlawNext Canada, etc.). Once complete, the new guidelines for the ICLL data collection
network will be published on the CALL website.

Disclaimer

Neither the content nor the views contained in this blog represent the positions of my employer or of any association to which I belong. Any links to a news article, an academic study or another blog post should not be considered to indicate any form of endorsement on my part or on that of my institution. This is a purely personal blog for the purposes of sharing information about library issues and legal research.